When dreams come true

by Ritter Brown

Ten years previous to the events just related, Padre Antonio, his parochial duties over for the day, was slowly retracing his steps homeward.

It was a mild, serene summer evening, and he paused before the massive iron gates set in the high adobe wall surrounding his garden for a last look at the sunset before entering his house.

It had been a strenuous day for Padre Antonio. Early that morning, Miguel Torreno while beating his mule, had been kicked half way across his corral by that stubborn though sensible animal, breaking Miguel's right arm and fracturing three of his ribs. But no sooner had it been ascertained that old Miguel would not die as he obstinately insisted that he would, calling frantically upon the Saints the while as the vision of purgatorial fires which he knew awaited him loomed before his distracted imagination, than the wives of Pedro Torlone and José Alvarez, neighbors and friends, quarreled over a cheap blue and white striped ribosa, embroiling their husbands who, without the Padre's intercession, would have come to blows.

Then the last sacrament had been administered to Don Juan Otero, one of Santa Fé's oldest and most respected citizens.

In a vain effort to banish the unpleasant recollections of the day from his thoughts, Padre Antonio turned with a sigh from the glories of the sunset which he had been contemplating, and was on the point of entering the garden when his quick ear caught the sound of horse's hoofs on the road, causing him to pause with his hand on the latch of the gate.

His house being situated in an unfrequented quarter of the town, he decided to await the coming of the animal; the bearer perchance of some friend or acquaintance. He had not long to wait. The sounds drew nearer and nearer, and presently, greatly to his astonishment, a tall, gaunt, half-starved gray horse with a riata fastened to his lower jaw, and upon whose back sat an equally gaunt and haggard Indian woman with disheveled hair and clothes tattered and dust begrimed, came into view around the sharp angle of the wall and stopped directly before him.

Never in all his long and varied experience had he witnessed such a pitiable spectacle as the woman presented. The wild, hollow eyes and wasted, emaciated form and features gave her more the appearance of some wild beast than a human being. She did not appear to be conscious of his presence; and before he had time to recover from his surprise or utter a word, she stretched both arms out before her as if toward the sun, and uttering a wild, harsh, inarticulate cry, dropped unconscious from the horse's back into his arms.

Experience had taught Padre Antonio to act quickly in cases of emergency, and with the assistance of his gardener and Manuela, his old Indian housekeeper, he carried her into the house and laid her upon his own bed. For days she lay in a delirium, the result of the terrible privations she had evidently endured. She raved and talked incoherently in a language which neither he nor Manuela understood.

The doctors whom he summoned at the outset, only shook their heads, and after a lengthy consultation informed him with the stoicism characteristic of the profession that, the patient would either die or recover. But Padre Antonio did not despair. In his extremity he turned to heaven, nor did his petition pass unheeded. At length, after many days of anxious watching, the fever left her and she sank into a deep, refreshing sleep from which she did not awaken for many hours.

It was toward the dawn of a Sabbath, and as the calm and peace of sleep settled upon her, her wasted and emaciated features began gradually to assume their normal outline. Nature asserted herself, and when the large dark eyes finally opened once more, it was into the face of a beautiful girl that Padre Antonio found himself gazing as he knelt by her bedside in prayer.